Thorne 2010: A very incomplete history of the missing hot spot

Emails are coming in about the latest attempt to announce that they’ve “found the hot-spot”: Thorne et at 2010.

It’s already being used in NOAA press releases to repeat the same line about how a “new scientific study” supports the models. The aforementioned support is rather weakly phrased as being “broadly consistent” (which somehow means the same thing as being “90% certain” a catastrophe is on the way, right?).

But it gives them another chance to claim it’s been found:

This new paper extensively reviews the relevant scientific analyses — 195 cited papers, model results and atmospheric data sets — and finds that there is no longer evidence for a fundamental discrepancy and that the troposphere is warming.

It says something about how important the hot spot is that they keep “finding it”. (Even though they never seem to issue a press release saying it’s missing.) But since the data from the last warming spell came in ten years ago, there are only so many ways they can rehash the same numbers. So now they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel in desperation. This new study is not a “new scientific study”, it’s a new review. This paper tells us upfront that its only distinctive contribution is to the “evolution” and “history” of this key point.

So they’ve run out of reanalysis, now they’re doing a peer reviewed history? (What’s next? The theatrical debunking where Discovering the Hot Spot hits Broadway in 2011?)

In any case, as histories go, this one is strategically very incomplete. Thorne et al doesn’t even mention McKitrick, McIntyre, and Herman (MMH)’s key paper which categorically refuted Santer 2008. (So Santer 08 is misleadingly listed as having “refuted” Douglass 2008 as if it was uncontested.) I described the incisive McKitrick et al paper and its conspicuous success in: The models are wrong (but only by 400%).

Thorne makes sure to graph the Allen and Sherwood data that was so creatively calculated from wind shear measurements. It not only sounds like a desperate way to measure temperature, but Pielke Snr has refuted it in a paper with Christy and others. Thorne doesn’t mention Christy et al 2010 either, but has time to reference Santer 2005 which found some warming in the short term trends, but nothing in the long term results. Worse, there is even a reference to the infamous Sherwood 2008 paper with the outrageously deceptive scale and patently misleading “hot spot” graph. At least Thorne did not repeat that graph (see below, it’s a special graph).

None of the other graphs of the hot spot use such a hot color for “zero”

Fred Singer is about to release another paper (or three) also refuting Santer.

From the abstract presented at the Erice Conference:

However, [the Santer 2008] result disagrees not only with an earlier analysis (Douglass et al 2007), but also with the conclusions of an independent study (NIPCC 2008), and with a recent report of the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP-SAP 1.1) (Karl et al 2006), which was written by some of the same authors as S08! The crucial chapter of CCSP had identified a “potentially serious inconsistency” between modeled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates (Santer et al 2006).

[Singer] shows here that no credible analysis supports the S08 claim of “consistency”: The “new observational estimates” are spurious and conflict with satellite data. The GH model results used are inadequate for the intended purpose and simply reflect chaotic and structural model uncertainties (which had been completely ignored by S08). [The] conclusion therefore is that the claimed “consistency of modeled and observed temperature trends” does not exist.

We look forward to seeing that analysis in full.

Yes, the hot spot is still missing. The models are still estimating that water vapor is amplifying the minor direct effect of carbon dioxide.

When you’re part of a team with the finance to employ thousands of workers, there’s no end to the ways to try to rewrite history. The Thorne et al version is just another attempt to provide a seemingly independent study and quoteable one-line answer to the vexing critical question that the billion-dollar-machine can’t answer.

Let’s see how many news outlets pick up the PR and seek out an alternative view of it.

“Looking at observed changes in tropospheric temperature and climate model expectations over time, the current evidence indicates that no fundamental discrepancy exists, after accounting for uncertainties in both the models and observations,” said Peter Thorne.

There’s no fundamental discrepancy… especially if you ignore the papers which show that there is.

76 comments to Thorne 2010: A very incomplete history of the missing hot spot

I think many of them know that eventually this is going to blow up in their faces…. That their names will become linked to the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated…. But for the meanwhile, they struggle and twist and spin their web of deceit more tightly about them.

With only two years left before the deadline of IPCC AR5 citing I think it’s pretty obvious that the usual suspects (Santer, Karl, Hergel etc.) are going to load up on junk fingerprint detection studies. What really matters to the scientific cleansers is quantity not quality. With Australian uber-warmist Nathaniel Bindoff as Lead Author of Chapter 10:Detection and Attribution of Climate Change, I think it’s safe to say that we already know what the final conclusions are going to say.

Not strictly on theme but this amusing comment from WUWT is worth reading.

Richard A. says:
November 17, 2010 at 5:53 am

Press Relase – CRU East Anglia – Everything is consistent with Global Warming
The CRU at East Anglia has released a new study which proves conclusively that Global Warming caused Climate Change, which in turn caused Climate Disruption, which in turn is the cause of everything else. Based on previous research by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster linking global warming with the decrease in the number of pirates over the last few hundred years, and new research showing that the current flat trend in global temperatures correlates with a recent resurgence of piracy, especially in the waters off of Somalia, Phil Jones et al, have submitted a new research paper to the Journal of Unbelievably New Claptrap (JUNC) that proves everything is caused by Global Warming.

It seems that they had to shift the zero into the red. How else could they fit a range of trends from -1.3 to 0.5 in the same plot? The real ‘center’ is about -0.4, which indicates a net negative trend globally (geographical weighting issues not withstanding). What this graph seems to be saying is that the hypothetical ‘hot spot’ is cooling at a slower rate than the rest of the atmosphere.

One of Hot Topic’s favourite sceptics is NZ C”S”C member Roger Dewhurst, best known for turning up from time to time to unload links to the denier meme du jour (and for his carefully cultivated grumpy old man persona). Yesterday morning he sent me a link to this “interesting” document prepared by Dr David Evans, one of Australia’s more active cranks (he’s Joanne Nova‘s partner, for a start). Evans’ latest assault on reason is a series of papers asking Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? His answer’s easy to guess…

Let’s ignore the main paper (it’s nonsense) and examine Evan’s promotion of his conclusion.

John Shade says:
November 17, 2010 at 12:03 pm
In an earlier post, I lamented the lack of a Gilbert & Sullivan piece on scary professors down under. Then as luck would have it, I was visited by a somewhat tipsy and unmusical muse and that led to this:

APOLOGIES: Gilbert and Sullivan
TITLE: I Am the Very Model of a Modern Climate Gateral

Lyrics
[Pirates of the IPPC]

I am the very model of a modern Climate Gateral
I’ve information digital, multimedia, and so quotable
I know the hacks of TV-land, and speak quite like an oracle
On ‘News at Ten’ to ‘News at One’, in order immaterial.

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters computational
I can set parameters, both simple and fantastical
About principal components I’m teeming with a lot o’news
With many cheerful facts about the Yamal trees we like to use

I’m very good at scariness and all degrees of fearfulness
I know how to give a child nightmares quite horribilis
In short, in matters terrible, fearsome, and excitable
I am the very model of a modern Climate Gateral

I know our media’s trickery, in Nature and the NYT
I dish out those releases and they headline anything from me
I quote in elegiacs all the flaws of Homo Sapiens
With polemics I can dazzle almost any leftie audience

I can tell Trenberths and Santers from the Manns and even Houghtons
I know the Schmidts and Hansens from the Albert Gores and Joneses
Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the music’s din anew
And whistle all the airs from that wretched M4GW

I can write a laundry list in Hulmian obtusiform
While forgetting every detail of those emails in exCRUciform
In short, in matters terrible, fearsome, and excitable
I am the very model of a modern Climate Gateral

In fact, when I know what is meant by “lapse rate” and “stratiform”
When I can tell at sight a timeplot from a tephigram
When such affairs as hunches and guesses I’m more wary at
And when I know precisely what is meant by “wet in an adiabat”

When I have learnt some better ways of methods so statistical
When I know more ANOVA than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental calculus
You’ll say a better Climate-Gateral has never walked among us

For my scientific knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of last century
But still, in matters terrible, fearsome, and excitable
I am the very model of a modern Climate Gateral”

This is nothing more than a continuation of the effort by the AGW ‘community’ to present an official reality; fortunately we still have the satellite data; since a THS theoretically involves not only heating of the troposphere but cooling of the stratosphere this can be easily checked by looking at the real data which is done at comment 96 here:

One thing that is so pleasurable about reading JN entries, is the insightfulness and ability to cut through the bull***t.

So many articles and papers are not ‘studies’ at all. They do not propose or test a hypothesis. They are simply literary reviews and mathematical manipulations. If we are lucky it find some connect-a-dot relationship. Of course this is not proof. It contains no direct cause-effect evidence; its imply a new hypothesis that raises more questions rather than answers. Such articles have quite limited long term value in terms of increasing the scientific collective knowledge.

Predicting weather is a gamble at best since the only truth about any forecast is that it’s wrong. With your own weather rock you will always know what’s going on outside. Here’s how to prepare and mount your very own weather rock.

Off topic but maybe of interest here. In an article in the major NZ MSM paper –the New Zealand Herald where Dr Nick Smith ( Min. of Environment) explains that agriculture may not be introduced into the NZ ETS scheme if there is not major evidence of significant moves in other countries towards similar schemes.
( Given what the Canadian senate has done and the US mid term results, these moves quite possibly will not happen ). Smith is quoted with the following in the article

“There’s a real question mark as to whether the Gillard Government is going to be able to make progress in getting a carbon price into their economy. I’m more pessimistic about the US,” said Smith yesterday.

Bob@15; I too looked at the hearing; it is the last hearing run by the outgoing AGW believers; the panel with Lindzen was of course stacked; Meehl especially was egregious, either ignorant or untruthful; at about 41 minutes she asserted that the last 10000 years was stable climatically and it was due to this that human civilization developed; this is completely wrong; human civilization started because CO2 levels rose from about 200ppm to about 280ppm at that time which allowed agriculture to flourish; in respect of temperature, despite the relatively rapid rise in CO2, which occurred after the Holocene peak temperature, these actually fell. Furthermore the Holocene and subsequent time featured remarkable climate variation and temperature fluctuations; see:

I am not a scientist so i am not familiar with the “my study trumps your study” mentality but surely this whole sorry saga paints every scientist as a joke.

To recap this whole sorry saga:

Douglas shows the RS thermometers show no hot spot.

Santer refutes this by saying wind shear is a more accurate way of measuring temps.

Sherwood has a crack by mimicking the IPCC (model prediction) graph but the only way he could do it was to show a 0C trend in fire engine red.

Paltridge does the same thing as douglas except he uses humidity readings.

Dressler dismisses this study by the wave of his hand.

MMH show the hotspot is not there via sat data and the only way it is refuted is by this latest piece of scientific mumbo jumbo.

I debated this very issue at a heavily fortified pro AGW site whos name is not worthy of mention, it was like 100 seagulls fighting over a chip and i was the chip. In the end the moderator decided to create a new thread titled “the missing hot spot misses the point”. Where he launched into a litany of reasons why the hot spot fact or fiction has no effect on the theory of AGW the issue was merely a conspiracy concocted by deniers as we have nothing else.

I read somewhere that during the days of witch burning there were not many witches to be burned because no one was seen wearing pointy hats or riding broomsticks. So the witch hunters had to come up with another way of finding witches. They did this by pricking them with a knife and if they bled they were OK but they did not then they were a witch and would be burned. I dont know how they selected their victims but i do know the ones that were to be witches were pricked by a knife with a retractable blade thus no blood was let.

Now thats how science was conducted back then and i put it to you that this is how it is conducted today, all we have done is replaced the retractable blade with wind shear and the color fire engine red.

Off topic, but I just heard Julia Gillard saying she wanted to” cross the T s & dot the I s & methodically work through the debate of policy.

How can this stated stance come close to the imperative price on carbon before the all the science is fully aired let alone debated properly by both sides? This Rainbow Alliance is a lot like mudguard – shiny on the outside but full of mud, rust & crap underneath

The “Methodical Approach” is yet another soundbite term for 25 second news items (particularly on our ABC)

I’m wondering what they mean by “current evidence”. Does that mean stuff they’ve looked at just now, or what is currently available? Perhaps they mean that the radiosonde temperature measurements are no longer “current”?

These old tricks of ignoring stuff and being vague are becoming rather boring. Can someone wake me if they actually report something of substance?

If the original work was correct, what was the point of Thorne’s report? Especially if all he did was repackage the existing data and ignore the reports he didn’t like.

I think there’s a story from 1931 where the Nazi’s tried to refute Einstein’s theory of Relativity using 100 “concensus” authors. (All good card-carrying party members we presume.) Einstein’s response was a classic:

“Why 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!”

And so it is with Mr. Thorne. Repeating bad science doesn’t make it correct.

Current science does not include planetary rotation and all the energies that are generated with it. As far as current science is concerned, all the same parameters are on the moon except atmosphere.
Meanwhile focusing on AGW has blinded science to actual physical evidence that make no sense in the AGW theory yet are fluffed off as warming.
Salinity changes on only the surface of the oceans, planetary wind reduction, atmospheric pressure buildup, stretching the atmosphere (new growth never seen before up mountainsides). When you add more and more molecules to the atmosphere, it generates more friction against wind and adds pressure buildup to the atmosphere.

In the context of climate change and ocean acidification, I also believe that because our nation is the biggest historical producer and second largest current producer of greenhouse gasses, we have a profound moral responsibility to be sure we get this right. Scripture teaches us to love thy neighbor as thyself. If our disproportionate impacts on the rest of the world are harming billions of other people and countless other species, we are not living up to that scriptural guidance.

Finally, even if one completely rejects the evidence that will be presented today and in reports from the National Academies of Science and countless other respected bodies, it still makes good sense to strive for our nation to be a leader in clean energy technology for economic self interest alone. Is not the reality of sending hundreds of billions of dollars abroad, often to countries with values antithetical to our own, at least a bit troubling? Is not the national security risk this creates disconcerting? Are the known impacts, such as Exxon Valdez, the recent Gulf Oil spill, and numerous other events not of sufficient concern to argue for change? Are not the facts of “red alert” days in our nation’s cities, days in which it is “unsafe to breathe” for our children, cause for some degree of consternation?

I believe the evidence of climate change and ocean acidification is compelling and troubling, but even without that conclusion, I am convinced that we must change our energy policies for reasons of economics, national security and environmental and human health.

Mark D. #36 – I have to say I don’t find it disturbing per se, just desperate. It’s a grab-bag attempt to link as many emotional appeals to the issue as possible – the Scriptural “love thy neighbor” is for religious conservatives, “strive for our nation to be a leader” is for American exceptionalists, “sending hundreds of billions of dollars abroad” is for economic protectionists, and so on for “national security risk”, “Exxon Valdez, the recent Gulf Oil spill”, “”red alert” days”, and finally “”unsafe to breathe” for our children” (after all, if your heart can’t be touched by suffocating children, what can you be touched by?).

All science, logic, and causation have been cast aside in favor of a naked attempt to tug at heartstrings.

So they’ve run out of reanalysis, now they’re doing a peer reviewed history? (What’s next? The theatrical debunking where Discovering the Hot Spot hits Broadway in 2011?)

Jeez, Jo, I thought you kept up on academic fads. What they’ll do is create a new sub-discipline, The History of Peer Reviewed History – (A)Climate Change, (A1)Reanalysis & Meta-studies, (A1.b)The Missing Hot Spot. Competence continues to decline in the rich industrialised nations (it may be an inevitable effect of industrialisation) – there has to be something to keep the otherwise unemployable busy (the trick is to keep them out of mischief).

Seriously, I get red-faced every time one of my country’s Premiere Research Institutions issues another of these mickey mouse “studies,” but then I remember that we realists in the rich industrialised nations are all in the same boat and it’s not so bad.

Speaking of History, one of your fellow Aussies, Keith Windschuttle, has an excellent smack-down of academic PoMo – The Killing of History. I think it should be in your recommended books section. True, it’s not climate related – maybe you could make a new section: Critical Thinking – General.

Yes, I found that disturbing, but it’s been clear for a while that Baird is infected with the green guilt disease. The upside is that this was the last gasp of someone drowning in their own rhetoric. I’m glad that it’s on the record that the best guess is closer to 1C than the 1.5-4.5C claimed by alarmists. If our leaders choose wrongly, which if history is any guide is almost sure to happen, our descendent’s will know that choosing wrong was not because of a lack of information, but due to a lack of judgment, which as politics goes, is the status quo.

Did you notice in the picture for witness panel I, Lindzen is hidden from view from Cicerone’s thumb sucking? This is a pose called ‘steepling fingers’, which generally implies a closed off mind which is subconsciously establishing a barrier to communication.

Can i ask, do you agree with what you posted or are you simply informing others of this warmaholic rant?

The latter and for David Evans to see how well researched articles get summarily dismissed because all metrics must conform to the CO2 hockey stick trend according to the Gareth Renowden/Bryan Walker world view (Walker is Joe Romm on valium). Anyone questioning this consensus is a crank, apparently. Garth has convinced himself that the missing heat is in the deep ocean (contrary to Thorne) and that the models do a good job in hindcast (just don’t point out the 30s, 40s and 50s).

The current topic in NZ (with Cancun around the corner) is the alarming rise in sea levels at Kiribati. Our sceptic site (Climate Conversation Group) has posted the BOM report that shows the inconvenient falling sea level trend at Kiribati (not to mention the dynamite fishing). This is Gareth’s latest effort from “How to be a denier #2: the truth is what we want it to be”:

“Which Treadgold are you going to believe? Neither, for preference. I’ll place my money on the people on the spot, and the Seaframe numbers. And you don’t need to be a genius to work out that with the rate of ice loss from the big ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica increasing, 30-40 years of unavoidable further warming in the pipeline, and the long term sea level rise that will come from thermal expansion of the deep ocean, the future for human habitation of low-lying islands around the world looks pretty grim. The only credible argument left is about how soon the people of Kiribati will lose their home.”

So no, you don’t need to be a genius – just an ordinary group-thinker.

Check out Figure 13 near the end of the report. But the trend is still publicised in rise relative to 1994. That conveys the scary message that doesn’t come across with “Sea Levels Falling at Kiribati”.

The warmists are in a bit of a quandary what with ocean temperatures falling and thermal contraction setting in. They’re really desperate to find the warmth at the end of the pipeline and they’re having to play whack-a-mole with all the inconvenient truths. Dummy spitting also seems to in vogue lately at Hot Topic.

At 1:56:00 of the congressional testimony, Santer says that there is data confirmation by radiosonde and satellite that the fingerprint exists. With a straight face!

Is there no end to the shamelessness of these #@%^#^*s?

Santer has history on this going back over 15 years.
This is the same $@#%*^d who published the infamous “a discernable human influence on global climate” in “Nature” (Vol.382, 4 July 1996, p.39-46)
In that paper, Santer cherry picked radiosonde data and (under political instructions) inserted the graph into the TAR AFTER THE MEETING OF THE DRAFTING SCIENTISTS.

Here is Santers graph..

Here is another graph USING THE FULL SET OF DATA THAT WAS AVAILABLE TO SANTER.

If the image thingy doesn’t work, see both graphs and the late great John L Dalys take on it HERE

John says…

“Santer et al choose the dates in the upper graph as a basis on which to compare observed conditions against those that the models would predict. Since the models predict upper troposphere warming under enhanced Greenhouse conditions, it was necessary to show that observed data agreed with the models, thus validating those models and proving that the Greenhouse human fingerprint was already evident.

When the full available time period of radio sonde data is shown (Nature, vol.384, 12 Dec 96, p522) we see that the warming indicated in Santer’s version is just a product of the dates chosen. The full time period shows little change at all to the data over a longer 38-year time period extending both before Santer et al”s start year, and extending after their end year.

And which version should we trust? The simple rule in all cases like this is -

The longer the time span of a data series, the more reliable is the underlying trend.”

There are people still active in the climate science field who really should be in jail or in hiding due to complete utter shame.
This episode of misrepresentation of data was highly influential in swaying many politicians leading up to the Kyoto protocol.

Now I realise there are AGW proponent commenters here who take exception at people like me who post these comments directed at individual scientists. If you are one of them, I’m waiting eagerly your explanation of this “a discernable human influence on global climate” misinformation.

George @44, I did notice that they conveniently didn’t have Lindzen in the picture, no doubt as to say he is “irrelevant”. Those of us that watched the video know better and that he was “pictured” but only a part shows. Silly games they play even with the photo’s! Never mind that Lindzen has a hairstyle better suited for radio……..

I didn’t notice the non-verbal communication you caught.

I thought it very odd that a left liberal scientist would quote from scriptures! That was the most disturbing part. Second was his repeating “acidic oceans” a concept that a “man of science” should know is untrue.

I asked Graham to comment on the latest revelation by Ottmar Edenhofer from the IPCC that the policy of the IPCC is more about wealth distribution than climate.

Edenhofer also made this statement: One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

PS That is the same arrorgant little tosser “Graham Readfearn” who used to be employed by the Courier Mail to write drivel for their green(RED) BLOG!! He was sacked by the Courier Mail after he made a FOOL of himself in the debate with Lord Monckton! I wondered where he would show his stupid face again….

This is a familiar trick in climates science – to hide the difference (between model predictions – sorry, projections – and observations). There are observations O(t) and a model predictions M(t) which clearly don’t agree. So you make lots of runs (same model, different parameters, or different models) and replace M(t) with M(t)+/-delta(M(t)). Modellers have complete control over delta(M) so they can make this as big as they want (big is good). When this is done it can be guaranteed that M-delta(M) < O < M+delta(M); so the observations fall within the range of the model predictions. It is then said that there is no inconsistency between models and observations. Sometimes they even pretend that delta(M) is a randomly distributed variable (rather than one made up by the modeller) and do a statistical test and state that there is no statistically significant difference. (But not this time, AFAICS)

crakar24:
November 18th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
I am not a scientist so i am not familiar with the “my study trumps your study” mentality but surely this whole sorry saga paints every scientist as a joke.

That’s why a lot of scientists who are not climate scientists are very concerned about the whole thing. If climate scientists succeed in discrediting the scientific method (which is what many believe they are trying to do) what new methodologies are going to be brought to bear on issues like this is the future?

“How did the debate with Monckton go Graham? Good to see you have licked your wounds and are back regurgitating the usual drivel with that old warhorse Naomi as a backstop; you forgot to mention Benny Peiser and his ‘discussions’ with Oreskes about the consensus argument which is used by the AGW acolytes as the basis of their promulgation of this facile and scientifically bereft ‘theory’.

It used to be that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel, now consensus is but I suppose with a life without meaning at least knowing you are part of a crowd is comforting; I would expect it comforts those at wrestling matches or anti-globalisation protests too.

Had to laugh at the mind-numbingly dumb comment that it is ideology motivating sceptics; we know it is not money with $15 trillion in pensioner funds being used in the US as a bludgeon to force Obama to support AGW. Just follow the money used to be the catch-cry of the investigative journalist; none of those here of course.”

Of course in the love-in supporting Readfearn it hasn’t got up, at least yet. Readfearn was involved in a debate with Monckton and Plimer; Readfern had Brooks on his side but they were demolished by Monckton and Plimer; see here:

Readfearn went bush as a result but like all good fanatics he has resurfaced with his parasitic and pathetic bile intact. Just a couple of points about this consensus which the likes of has-been academics like Oreskes are pushing; this is what a truly great scientist had to say about a scientific consensus:

“The exception proves that the rule is wrong.” That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.’

And Richard Feynman completely summed up the lie of AGW:

“There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in “cargo cult science.” It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.“

Hi Eddy
Yeah I’m alive and kicking. Been reading all the posts but unable to comment due to laptop damage by floods.
I’ve also had some business hassles. A man of leisure at mo, catching up on work around the property. My horses and tractor missed me lol

You have no idea how frustrating it’s been not being able to engage with some of the alarmists, grrr

p.s. If I were to go on a camping trip with MattB, it wouldn’t be me who got lost

I haven’t seen MattB around for some time either. Not that I miss him so much but he’s been such a fixture for so long you can’t help but notice his absence.

He started a business so I presume he is learning a bit about working hard.

Besides, there’s not been much new input into the debate in recent months, just the same issues bouncing around. I think the dice are rolled now… with the US economy in obviously bad shape it’s not likely congress will go ahead with anything that seriously reduces US fuel consumption (although they may dance around with lots of paper shuffling and pretend to be doing something). China has made quite clear at Copenhagen that they would not sign up to any binding CO2 cuts, and they have shown very little confidence in the whole US process (as far as I can make out).

There’s the Cancun meeting coming up, but the delegates have switched back to stealth mode — it’s barely made the news, they gave up organising any public participation, and the best they seem to be hoping for is slip something past while no one pays attention. They key is what China and India do at Cancun but I expect the reports will be sparse.

After that it all comes down to waiting a decade and see where the temperature goes. My bets are that temperatures will mostly go down with the solar cycle, and the Bruckner cycle… if that happens then public support for AGW will be down below 30% or there abouts, politicians will slip out and start backpedaling (they already are to some extent).

[...] CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot-spot of moist air will develop over [...]

[...] balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot-spot of moist air will develop over [...]

[...] are wrong because the government funds them (which would be an ad hom). The IPCC are wrong because 28 million weather balloons, 6,000 boreholes, 3,000 ocean buoys, and hundreds of thousands of original raw surface stations [...]